


The Perfect Con

by Lise (thissugarcane)



Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Genre: Yuletide 2004
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:01:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thissugarcane/pseuds/Lise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Rusty looks at Danny, and Danny looks at Rusty, and then Rusty puts down the empty messenger bag. Well, it's not quite empty; there's two sombreros and a brightly patterned blanket in it.  Rusty can tell they're about to become their 'personal effects'.</em><br/>yuletide 2004, for K. a pre-O11 story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Perfect Con

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kat.

They call it the Christmas con in the business, because it's always pulled around Christmas - phony charities pretending to collect for the needy in order to rip good people off. Rusty is a fan of the honest con, of making sure that, if you can help it, the people being robbed are stupid enough to deserve it. Pretending to be someone who intends to cure cancer and actually being someone who fleeces old ladies doesn't sit well with him. Besides, it has no style.

"It's a classic," Danny says to him, "because it works. He only works Christmas-time and ends up making enough to get by the rest of the year in Tahiti."

"Nice women," Rusty comments. The floor plans on the table in front of them are 8 1/2 x 11", small snapshots of the office above a diamond store. They'll hit the diamonds, too, but the office is of one Lionel Turner, former business associate and current jackass. "I like the little paper umbrellas, too," and then Rusty says, "so tell me."

"Easy as pie," Danny says, and pulls one of the details from the bottom of the stack. "See here? Fire escape, window we can just cut through."

Rusty studied the lines and boxes. Mechanical heating systems, air conditioning ducts, electrical and security grids. "Tight security," he finally tells Danny. "We'll have to get someone else, I can't cut through this alarm."

Danny grins, slightly. "Won't have to."

Rusty blinks, looks down at the drawing again, and then blinks. "You want to climb up and cut through a window during the day?" He shakes his head. "We'll need a forward play to get him out of the way, and something going on downstairs."

There's something missing here in Danny's plan, something that Rusty hasn't quite seen yet. The whole picture, much like a floorplan, comes together because of a hundred smaller details, and each one has to be reviewed before the thing will work. "The diamonds," Rusty says. "We'll keep them?"

Danny shrugs. "Why not?"

"Then," and Rusty rubs his forehead. "There," he says finally. "The parking garage."

"This is Beverly Hills. Lots of nice cars," Danny says, and Rusty nods, says,

"Aaahh," and he circles the most likely place on their little detail to plant something to rock the parking garage and bring the police to the other side of the street.

\--

They still need someone. More specifically, they need someone to take care of the garage who won't get their balls in a knot when the red and blue lights show up. It narrows the list significantly, and it also makes it harder to recruit with two days left. Rusty fiddles with his chopsticks.

"I love Chinese diners," he says, "they've got this ambiance about them."

Danny looks at him, and then his lip twitches, and Rusty knows he wants the meal to go better than it had been so far. Basher isn't in yet, and that spells trouble. The list, according to Rusty and Danny concurred, was Basher, and that was it. "So now you know," Danny says.

Basher picks up a wonton out of the bowl with his fingers, and it drips onto the tablecloth as he pops it into his mouth. "I don't know, chaps," he says, "it's a bit--"

Rusty says, "problematic?"

"You're talking about Christmas con," Basher says. "I've got scruples, you know."

Danny leans back. Danny's in charge of this meeting, because Rusty's mind is still locked on how to get the bonds from the office into cold, hard cash without anyone realizing that A, they'd been stolen, and B, the cash to buy them was stolen. Rusty isn't having a good time. "Lionel targets corporations, goes around in a business suit and gets them to sign over $20,000 at a time," Danny says, and sips his green tea, pinky daintily out.

"Really." They worked with Phil that one time, but Phil was off in Bermuda on his honeymoon, so Basher has to fill in. They don't have anyone else. "He really skips the door-to-door, go straight for the boss?"

"Cross my heart," Rusty says. The food sucks.

"I wonder," Danny muses. "If they're being ripped off and the IRS finds out, do they still get their tax write-off?"

Rusty chomps a spring roll and for sixteen seconds, wishes he could pull one job a year and end up in Tahiti. Basher says, "even if you're right, we're still up the shite. We can't get the goods in place to canvass the rich in a week."

Danny's eyes light up, and Rusty remembers why Danny's in charge of this meeting. He can sell anything. "You're missing the beauty of this," he says, right before Basher slaps his forehead and Danny continues, "Lionel's already got the money."

\--

So there it is, and it's all going according to plan. The three of them have worked together before, so the rhythm is right, the rhythm is working. It's not quite foolproof but Rusty's confident. They just need to come up with some way to get him out of the building.

"He never leaves?" The guy sitting next to him at the bar is six four, skinny, and wearing a doorman uniform from one of the nicest pieces of real estate in Los Angeles. The bottom floor has a jewelry store with their own armed guards. He gets to hold open the door for some of the richest people in the city. Of *course* he's willing to tell you his life story for a couple of shots of tequila.

"Just to take that stupid mutt to the vet." The kid shakes his head. "Did I tell you the dog shits on the carpet? He lets it."

Rusty leans across the bar and gives the guy polishing glasses a fifty. "Make sure the kid eats before he gets home," and gives the bartender a nice smile. The guy nods, and Rusty gets up, slaps the kid on his back. "Morton, right?" he asks. The kid nods. "Listen, Morton, don't worry. You won't be holding the door for long."

"Goddamned dog," the kid mutters, and Rusty's gone.

\--

Necessary; well, in someone's mind it was necessary. Certainly Rusty isn't going to argue with the necessity of making Danny look like a fool as well as getting the job done. "You look fabulous."

"I really think--"

Rusty pats Danny's shoulder, and hands him the Santa hat, the bells. "We need someone outside the building," he says, and then, "don't think, mi compadre, that's what I do."

"That's cute." Danny puts the hat on. "What about the dog?"

"Sick on schedule." Justice had promised the dog wouldn't die. Rusty's honest enough in the back of his mind that he really doesn't care all that much, but it's better to know. It might get messy; people can do funny things if you fuck with their pets.

Danny says, "Even with a high roller like Reuben we still need a big enough theater to stash the bonds."

"I've got that covered, relax." December 23rd in L.A. - Danny was already sweating under the cheap velour. There are palm trees outside their hotel window. "Just make the call when he's out of the building and we're home free."

With a sigh, Danny pulls the adhesive backing off the fake beard. "Where are you going to be able to switch bonds for cash that quickly?" he asks.

Rusty straightens his tie, an orange monstrosity that unfortunately matched perfectly with his belt. "What's the longest undefended border in the world?"

"Us and Canada."

Rusty pulls a sombrero out. "What's the easiest border crossing to smuggle through?"

Danny immediately answers, "Tijuana."

\--

According to plan. Foolproof, even. A million in bonds, five hundred thousand in precious jems, and no alarms. The garage rocks, some BMWs are totaled, and Basher brings the car around right on schedule. They pull up to the border, and the fat guard there doesn't even look at their passports to make sure they're the right color, never mind real.

According to plan. Until now.

Rusty looks at Danny, and Danny looks at Rusty, and then Rusty puts down the empty messenger bag. Well, it's not quite empty; there's two sombreros and a brightly patterned blanket in it. Rusty can tell they're about to become their 'personal effects'. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Reuben getting the fuck out of dodge in his Cadillac.

The Mexican policeman says, "Nombre, por favor?"

"Que?"

"Nombre?"

Rusty looks at Danny, and Danny looks at Rusty.

\--

And so they spend Christmas Eve in Tijuana, in a dirty Mexican jail with twenty other supposed border hoppers. Rusty, with a passport that says Miguel, and Danny, with a driver's license that says Lucinda, are both about to step into court.

"Tu nombre por favor?"

Rusty looks at Danny, and then Danny looks at Rusty. A con - not convict, but rather con-artist - learns early on that one of the signs of being a gentleman is that when you're caught, you confess and do your time. Rusty says, "Miguel Alvarez."

The Mexican cop currently guarding the door bursts into a flurry of Spanish too fast for Rusty to catch, and the judge answers in kind. He gets "escaped" and "criminal", all right. Finally, the judge says, "you are hereby extradited to the United States of America to be returned to the prison from which you escaped."

Danny leans over, and mutters, "His grammar's better than yours."

Rusty says, "Goddamned." As they put handcuffs on him, he says, "see you," to Danny. They lead him to the door, and he casually puts his hands up to scratch his nose as, outside, the wing of the courthouse currently under renovation explodes.

\--

"About time."

"Hang on, mate," and Basher leans over the front seat, winding his body around the gearshift that has Danny's fist clutching it to snap at Rusty's hands with a pair of bolt cutters. "I 'ad to wait until they were on lunch."

"Meanwhile, I'm being sent back to America straight to prison." Rusty rubs his wrists where the cuffs are digging in. "One thing I'll tell you, whoever Miguel Alvarez is, he can have his fucking passport back."

"Road check," Danny warns, and suddenly the cuffs snap off, and Basher puts his bolt cutters back into the toolbox on the floor of the sedan. The outside of the car has the logo of the most prominent Mexican bank stamped on it, but you never know.

"Identification and licenses," the guard says. Instead of the Levi's they were arrested in, Danny and Rusty wear Armani - Rusty had hopes that they were beyond lightning changes in the back seat of the car while handcuffed, but apparently. Basher has a hard hat on. Danny pulls everyone's papers out, bored, as the guy examines them. He squints, staring at the perfectly laundered papers that have them hailing from the bank, inspection team - Reuben came through, Rusty can give him that - and then his supervisor starts yelling in Spanish.

Rusty can't make out most of it, but he gets the gist; the supervisor is pointing at the logo on the car and his cheeks are red. "Si," the guy says, and then, "Thank you." They're two miles from the border.

"You never can be too careful," Danny says, and smiles at the guy as he puts on his sunglasses. "Merry Christmas."

"Aye, and to you." The guy waves them on, and stops a bus full of kids.

"Well," Rusty says.

"Yeah," Danny replies. In the passenger seat, Basher rolls his eyes.

Rusty leans back, picks taco out of his teeth as they pull up to the border crossing. He closes his eyes as the fat guard proceeds to wave them through without even checking to see if their passports are the right color. "Let's get some dim sum," he says, as they pull away from Tijuana a million five richer - once Reuben calls of course. Nothing else can go wrong, all Reuben has to do is hit the bank in Belize.


End file.
